ENDGAME

JUST LIKE ALWAYS, I had set my cellphone alarm before I climbed the tree ladder so it would vibrate at the exact end of legal shooting hours. The alarm keeps me honest. And focused. Like now.

I knew the moment had to be close. Any second my phone would start buzzing like a cricket in my pocket. I stared through the scope, the crosshairs pulsing with each heartbeat, as I silently watched the biggest deer I’d ever seen in the woods feed on brambles just inside the edge of a swamp. The